The Latest: Rauner wants $1 billion tax cut with pension fix

Feb. 14, 2018

Gov. Bruce Rauner says a $1 billion tax cut should be the top priority for this year's legislative session. The Republican said Wednesday it could be achieved by changing the way pensions are doled out to state employees.

But the pension changes are contentious and experts question whether a court would find it constitutional.

Rauner's fourth budget address included his promised plan for a phased-in cut in last year's income-tax increase. Lawmakers increased the rate from 3.75 percent to 4.95 percent to help pay down the state's massive deficit. Rauner vetoed it but it was enacted anyway.

Gov. Bruce Rauner's budget proposal includes $50 million for projects to eradicate deadly Legionnaires' diseases at the Illinois Veterans Home in Quincy.

Legionnaires' has contributed to the deaths of 13 residents of the home since 2015 and made dozens more ill. The illness has returned each year and officials say two more residents were diagnosed with the disease this week.

Legionnaires' is contracted by people who inhale vapor from infected water. Rauner said in January he would replace the plumbing system at a cost of $25 million to $30 million.

In his budget address Wednesday he said a newly named task force met this week to study the best remedies.

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12:35 p.m.

Gov. Bruce Rauner proposes spending more than $8 billion on elementary and secondary education in the coming year.

Rauner announced the plan in his budget address Wednesday. The spending would include $350 million more promised in the school-funding overhaul approved last summer,

But the Republican pointed out the boost depends on his proposals to shift the cost of teacher pensions to school districts and dictating the terms of employee health-insurance programs.

He promised an end to yearslong declines in state funding for higher education, proposing a $100 million increase in capital projects for state colleges. But universities would be participating in paying pension for their staffs.

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12:15 p.m.

Gov. Bruce Rauner wants to cut $2 billion in state spending in part by shifting the employer's portion of teacher pension payments to public school districts.

The Republican unveiled his plan Wednesday as part of his proposed budget for the year that begins July 1.

The pension shift would reverse a long-standing practice of the state paying local schools' portion of pension costs. The one exception was Chicago Public Schools. The local Chicago school budget paid teacher pensions until an overhaul of education funding last summer.

Rauner would save $2 billion in state spending through the pension change and by taking health care costs out of the mix of benefits for which union employees can bargain in contract negotiations. But that must be approved by the General Assembly. The Democrats who control it likely won't go along.

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4:50 a.m.

Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner unveils his 2019 budget proposal to a General Assembly expecting to hear him explain how he'll erase a $9 billion deficit.

The first-term Republican delivers his budget address Wednesday. He's coming off the first yearlong budget since taking office in 2015. Lawmakers sent it to him last summer after voting to override his veto of an income-tax rate increase from 3.75 percent to 4.95 percent.

Rauner's budget director told a Senate Appropriations Committee last week that the governor had whittled a $1.7 billion deficit in the budget given him last summer down to $600 million. There's also more than $8 billion in backlogged bills.

Rauner also must come up with $350 million more for schools and say how he plans to roll back the tax hike.